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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28938798">scratch marks</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/prydon/pseuds/prydon'>prydon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Penumbra Podcast</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Other, Self-Harm, This is a fic about self harm so please skip it if that is a triggering subject for you!, it has a positive ending but it's still pretty heavy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 03:46:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,508</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28938798</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/prydon/pseuds/prydon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter Nureyev has always felt too much.</p><p> <i> First rule of thieving: keep your feelings in check. Don’t ever let them control you. </i></p><p>Mag scolds him when he gets too emotional. <i>A certain amount of rage is useful, Pete. A certain amount of sadness can drive us forward and inspire us to fight. If you let it overwhelm you, however, you stop thinking clearly. You risk endangering yourself and the cause.</i></p><p>Peter has been trying very hard to listen to him, because he knows Mag is right. He usually is.</p><p>It gets hard, sometimes, though.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>148</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>scratch marks</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>There's a sort of subtle underlying trend in my fic of Nureyev hurting himself with his nails in moments of distress and idk...I've always wanted to write a full fic exploring that specifically, so here it is. Please please read at your discretion.</p><p>Obviously the big warning on this is self harm (by way of fingernails), but there are also very brief mentions of past alcohol and drug abuse, implied/offscreen sex, and minor unnamed character death.</p><p>  <i>My partner asks<br/>me to keep my blood inside my body<br/>and I always struggle to honor<br/>this basic love. I tear at my skin </i></p><p>  <i>and at the Earth, despite myself.<br/>It is hard to remember that every<br/>body is an ocean under siege<br/>and life is just laboring between<br/>our self-inflicted scars.</i> </p><p>- Kayleb Rae Candrilli, from “Transgender Heroic: All This Ridiculous Flesh”</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Peter Nureyev has always felt too much.</p><p>
  <em>First rule of thieving: keep your feelings in check. Don’t ever let them control you.</em>
</p><p>Mag scolds him when he gets too emotional. <em>A certain amount of rage is useful, Pete. A certain amount of sadness can drive us forward and inspire us to fight. If you let it overwhelm you, however, you stop thinking clearly. You risk endangering yourself and the cause.</em></p><p>Peter has been trying very hard to listen to him, because he knows Mag is right. He usually is.</p><p>It gets hard, sometimes, though.</p><p>It gets hard when the pretty boy with the freckles and the sparkling brown eyes who used to squat in the same old building as him gets caught stealing by the Guardian Angel System, and Peter watches him be shot down in front of him.</p><p>Suddenly he’s screaming and crying, and Mag is yelling at him, “Get a hold of yourself, Peter!”</p><p>He wants to. He wants to more than anything, but he can’t. The feelings are spilling out of him like a dam breaking, so much at once. It feels like something has taken root inside of his gut and is twisting his insides apart. He reaches out a hand towards the boy’s prone body, choking on air.</p><p>Mag eventually drags him away, scolding him again. “Stop crying. You barely even knew him. People die, Pete. You can’t lose yourself like this every time it happens, or you won’t be able to move forward.”</p><p>He wants the feelings to stop, too, but he can’t control them. It’s sickening, how out of control he feels. He finds himself subconsciously gripping his arm with one hand, digging his nails into the skin until they leave white indents. It stings, but the pain is grounding, somehow.</p><p>
  <em>You’re alive. He’s dead, but you’re still alive.</em>
</p><p>His sobs turn into gasps, and then into nothing. He regains control, and promises to never let himself lose it to such an extent ever again.</p><p>He keeps that promise all the way up until his knife is in Mag’s stomach.</p><p> </p><p>After he escapes New Kinshasa, he finds himself in a space port bathroom, desperately washing blood off of his hands and dry heaving.</p><p>It feels as though the entire world is pressing down on him at once. He knows he’s on the verge of cracking, and he can’t allow that to happen. He isn’t allowed to break down, not here, not when his name and face are being projected onto every billboard in Brahma. He needs to get it together. He needs to take what he’s feeling right now and-</p><p>File it away.</p><p>
  <em>File it away.</em>
</p><p>He’s gotten good at doing that, but for some reason the ability is lost to him at present. His mind won’t stop replaying Mag’s death over and over behind his eyes, and he can’t stop the agonizing pounding in his ears and heart.</p><p>By instinct, his hand goes to his arm, and nails dig into flesh. He’s done it a hundred times over the past few years: when he’s sad, when he’s angry, when a pretty face is threatening to distract him. This is the first time he breaks the skin, however. It hurts badly, and the pain is just enough to cut through the rushing tidal wave of<em> feeling</em> that is threatening to drown him.</p><p>He bites back his sobs, finishes washing his hands, and moves on.</p><p> </p><p>Most of the time, it isn’t even intentional: just a force of habit. He’ll come down from a moment of weakness, of panic, and discover scratch marks on his arms, or his thighs, or his neck. He knows it’s not sustainable, but it works, and he can see no adverse effects. The marks always fade quickly as though they were never there, and if anyone asks he can write them off easily as the result of a torrid love affair.</p><p>He doesn’t think anything of it, until a certain lady comes along who turns his world upside-down and goes against all his expectations.</p><p>They’re side by side in a Martian tomb, and his body is on fire.</p><p>The manacles that Miasma’s assistants put on him to shock him anytime Juno doesn’t read his mind fast enough have left white hot burns spidering up his arms. He’s doing everything he can to bite back the pain. He doesn’t want Juno to see him hurting. Juno already thinks all of this is his fault, even though it’s so clearly Nureyev who’s to blame.</p><p>He’s already had to see his expression through the glass in the testing room, and how it crumples into rage and grief and self-loathing every time Nureyev is electrocuted. He doesn’t want to see that again.</p><p>His hand moves to one of the few remaining unmarked areas of his arm without really thinking. It seems counterproductive, to exacerbate his wounds all the more by digging his nails into them, but it feels right somehow: it’s painful, but this is a pain he has control over. If he’s creating it, it can’t take him by surprise and make him accidentally cry out.</p><p>Juno still notices, though. He always notices everything.</p><p>“Hey. Hey, you’re hurting yourself.” He gently tugs Nureyev’s hand away from his arm. “I know it itches, but doing that only makes it worse.”</p><p>Nureyev suddenly feels off-balance.</p><p>
  <em>You’re hurting yourself.</em>
</p><p>It’s a simple enough statement, and one he knows is objectively correct, but he’d never really thought of it that way. When put like that, combined with the concerned expression on Juno’s face, it seems bad. Wrong. Like it’s something he definitely shouldn’t be doing, not just a force of habit or subconscious tick.</p><p>“Oh. Of course. I didn’t even realize I was doing it,” he lies.</p><p>Somewhere, in some quiet internal place, he resolves not to do it again- at least not in Juno’s presence.</p><p> </p><p>Then the universe falls apart beneath his hands, and his worst fears present themselves to him in the shape of an empty hotel bed.</p><p>He means to file it all away. He tries to. He throws every single lock in his mind in the direction of Juno Steel, private eye, with the intention of filing him somewhere dark and deep, never to be considered again. He can’t, though. The memories slam themselves against the walls of his brain, refusing to be caged.</p><p>He lies on the bed for an hour, just breathing. He shoves a fist in his mouth to trap the sob that is threatening to escape from it. He knows this is silly: he has no reason to deny himself the simple human act of crying. He is alone, and he destroyed the cameras in the room as soon as they arrived. Nonetheless, he cannot cry, not even in front of an audience composed of only himself. He worries if he does, the dam will break and he will no longer be able to contain any of it.</p><p>He finally stumbles to the bathroom to shower. He lets the water run so hot it nearly scalds him, then gets out. He makes the mistake of looking at himself in the mirror.</p><p>There are bruises all down his neck and collarbone. Bruises put there gently by Juno, that he’d thought were <em>I love you</em>’s but were really <em>goodbye</em>’s.</p><p>He suddenly can’t stand it anymore, can’t stand the weight of his love for a lady who apparently couldn’t care less for him, or the uselessness of that love. He wants to rip it out of himself. He claws at his neck, as though he can rid himself of the bruises if he digs deep enough with his chipped nails.</p><p>This time, there is no Juno Steel to pull his hands away.</p><p>The bruises stay, of course. Only now they’re also surrounded by burning red lines.</p><p>He leaves the hotel wearing a scarf.</p><p> </p><p>It’s been a long time since Nureyev even felt enough to struggle with repressing it.</p><p>He boxed everything up that day, every fragile part of him sealed and trapped behind a dozen padlocks.</p><p>Those padlocks keep breaking, one after the other, now that Juno is back in his life. He spent the entire family meeting before the Zolotovna heist with one hand gripping his own thigh in a claw-like vice, forcing himself to stay grounded. The pain succeeds in grounding him, but it also succeeds in distracting him so thoroughly that he doesn’t hear most of what the captain says about their ultimate goal.</p><p>No matter. He didn’t make a fool of himself by revealing any feelings in front of Juno Steel, so he’s satisfied. The important thing, now, is the gala.</p><p>He notices the half moon marks on his thigh are lingering as he changes into his outfit for the mission, but it doesn’t matter. Monsieur Dauphin wears pants.</p><p>Madame Dauphin, as it turns out, wears stunningly beautiful golden ballgowns.</p><p>If he keeps one hand clenched around the wrist of his other arm to keep himself calm throughout the heist, then…well, that’s just what he needs to do. He can’t afford to get worked up, not on a mission and certainly not in front of Juno.</p><p>He gets worked up and everything almost falls apart anyway, but they still end up returning to the ship in one piece and with the globe in hand, which is probably the best he could have hoped for. He survives his talk with Buddy and is about to get some much needed rest- or rather, much-needed time alone staring at the ceiling- when Juno knocks on the door.</p><p>Against his better judgement, perhaps, he lets him in and invites him to sit.</p><p>Nureyev doesn’t even notice that he’s doing it while Juno apologizes until a calloused hand is gently tugging open the fist he has clenched on his knee.</p><p>“Hey,” Juno says, voice laced with concern. “You’re bleeding.”</p><p>“Hm?”</p><p>He’s right. Monsieur Dauphin’s nails are long, and they’ve left pinpricks of red on Nureyev’s palm where he was digging them in.</p><p>“Oh,” he says. “Oops.”</p><p>Juno’s face, previously wet-eyed and so open, closes off suddenly. He gets to his feet. “Look, I get it. You can’t stand me. That…that’s fine. It’s understandable, after what I did. I could tell how irritated you were with me at the gala, too, and I’m not gonna put you through that anymore. I’ll leave you alone.”</p><p>Nureyev stares at him, baffled, for a long moment before realizing what’s happening: Juno thinks he was clenching his fist to the point of bleeding because he was that <em>angry. </em></p><p>He’s feeling a hell of a lot right now, and he’s not really sure where one feeling begins and another begins, but he knows none of them are anger. Not anymore.</p><p>“No,” he says quickly. “Please, don’t go. I’m just…a little overwhelmed.”</p><p>Juno still looks unsure, but he nods. “That makes sense. It’s only been a day. I shouldn’t have kept trying to spring this on you before you were ready. All of this is your call; I just want to follow your lead.”</p><p>“Follow my lead,” Nureyev echoes softly.</p><p>For that to be possible, he needs to know where he actually wants to lead them. Does he want a relationship with Juno Steel? Does he want to be a part of this crew, this family? Is any of that even possible?</p><p>He doesn’t know for sure, but there is <em>one </em>thing he’s positive that he wants in this moment, and it’s to pull Juno close and kiss him.</p><p>So he does.</p><p> </p><p>Nureyev finds himself feeling a lot more in the following months. More than he has in years.</p><p>Most of it is good feelings, which is even more uncommon for him. Sometimes even the good threatens to drown him, however, and feels like too much- so much more than he deserves. The weight of his debts constantly hanging over him doesn’t help either, and he spends most days trapped between the ecstasy of being with Juno and the existential dread of the knowledge that none of it can last.</p><p>When he’s beside Juno in bed, however, the former tends to overpower the latter.</p><p>“Don’t fall asleep,” Juno chuckles one night when they’re pressed together, clothes having been discarded somewhere on the floor over an hour ago. “We should get cleaned up first.”</p><p>“Comfortable…” Nureyev mumbles.</p><p>“Yeah, I know, my tits make a great pillow. Still, budge up. I’m gonna take a shower.”</p><p>Juno affectionately pushes Nureyev off of him and rolls over to turn on the lamp beside the bed. He gets up, planting a kiss on Nureyev’s lips, but then pauses. A frown crosses his face, and he reaches out a hand to gently touch Nureyev’s neck.</p><p>“Fuck,” he says. “Did I do that to you?”</p><p>Nureyev inclines his head. “Hm? Do what?”</p><p>He glances towards the mirror in his vanity, cringing a little at his own tousled, naked form, to see what Juno’s looking at. Lo and behold, his neck is covered in scratch marks. A vague memory rises to the surface of his mind, of worrying at his neck before dinner when some old, dark feeling had randomly surfaced and he’d struggled to file it away.</p><p>He reddens slightly. “Ah, no. That was…me. Earlier.”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“A nervous tick of mine, I’m afraid.”</p><p>Juno furrows his brow in concern. “They look pretty bad. You should be more careful, Nureyev.”</p><p>“Yes, yes.”</p><p>“I mean it,” Juno says. He leans over and presses a soft kiss to Nureyev’s neck. “Be gentle with yourself.”</p><p>
  <em>Be gentle with yourself. </em>
</p><p>The words play in Nureyev’s mind as he listens to Juno shower. He rubs at one of the marks idly. When it comes to his priorities, he doesn’t think being gentle with himself has ever even made the list. If anything, he’s not hard enough on himself. Going easy leads to silly mistakes, after all.</p><p> </p><p>He makes one of those silly mistakes the following week.</p><p>He’d memorized his route on the heist exactly as he was supposed to, but then he reached two doors and his head swam and suddenly the Solar on their signs looked as foreign to him as Ancient French. That’s ridiculous, of course- he’s been fluent in Solar for over a decade. In that instant, though, with adrenaline buzzing in his head and his body heavy from all the running, the two signs looked virtually identical.</p><p>He didn’t have time to puzzle them out, so he guessed.</p><p>He guessed wrong.</p><p>The room he ran into wasn’t the one that led to the garage where the Ruby 7 was waiting, it was the security room- and therefore filled to the brink with security guards. In a moment he was swarmed, and it took all his disappearing tactics to get out unscathed. By the time he managed it, though, the mission was already ruined. The whole building was on high alert, so there was no way Jet and Juno could complete their infiltration.</p><p>They failed, and it was entirely his fault.</p><p>When the crew got back to the Carte Blanche, they all split up to return to their rooms and change, but not before Buddy instructed them to meet in her office for a family meeting in thirty minutes time. He hadn’t missed the way her eyes lingered on him as she said it, filled with disappointment and confusion.</p><p>Now he has twenty minutes before he has to face her in front of the whole crew. He’s going to have to listen to her spell out his failure, and then admit that he has no excuse for it. That would be bad enough on its own, but the worst part is that he can’t<em> stop fucking shaking. </em></p><p>As he sits on his bed, trying to change out of his guard’s uniform, his whole body is trembling. He’s already filled to the brim with rage at himself, and he knows that as soon as soon as Buddy voices her own anger, his emotions will overflow. He can’t afford that. He’s already proven himself to be a failure; he can’t also break down in front of the others. He <em>can’t.</em></p><p>Mag’s voice echoes in his ears.</p><p>
  <em>Get a hold of yourself, Peter!</em>
</p><p>He’s not going to be able to get over this in twenty minutes. Not without help.</p><p>Before he knows it, he’s hugging himself and jabbing his nails into his upper arms.</p><p>He’s wearing one of his favorite sets of acrylics today: they’re long, black, and filed into razor sharp points. They sink through his skin easily, and the pain they cause is just as piercing. It catapults him back to reality and he gasps like a drowning man who’s finally broken the surface. His head already feels clearer than it did before, but it’s not good enough. He has to focus. He has to overpower the emotions completely, or he won’t be good enough. The captain will hate him, likely fire him for his weakness, and she can’t do that, because he needs this-</p><p>His hands move without him thinking about them, raking down his arms. It doesn’t feel good, necessarily, but it is distracting. He can finally breathe again. In a few minutes, he’ll be able to change into something with long sleeves and make his way to the meeting without issue.</p><p>“Hey, Ransom, you wanna give me back that sleep shirt that you…”</p><p>His head shoots up to find Juno has opened his door and is now staring at him, wide-eyed, and Nureyev has never regretted their agreement about not needing to knock before entering each other’s quarters more.</p><p>“Juno,” he says, attempting a smile and failing rather miserably.</p><p>“Nureyev,” Juno breathes, then rushes to his side, slamming the door behind him. “What the fuck? Are you okay? Were you injured on the mission? You should’ve said something!”</p><p>Nureyev looks down at his arms and cringes in surprise. There are long, bloody lines down both of his arms, dripping slowly onto his uniform. They look…bad. He hadn’t realized just how bad, until now.</p><p>It takes Juno a moment to put it together. Nureyev sees his eyes flicker to Nureyev’s nails, caked with blood, then back to the lines- five on each arm.</p><p>His expression changes immediately from concern to one of poorly concealed shock and horror, and Nureyev is struck with the same feeling that he had back in the tomb when Juno had pulled his hand away. The feeling that he has done something distinctly wrong, and the guilt of that realization.</p><p>“Nureyev…<em>why?”</em> Juno asks.</p><p>He doesn’t have an answer.</p><p> </p><p>Nureyev watches morosely as Juno packs up all of his acrylic nails, tugging at the bandages on his arms. Juno took them from one of the first aid kits stashed in the depths of the room, after Nureyev all but begged him not to go to Vespa. He’d reluctantly agreed, spun some weak excuse to Buddy about why they couldn’t attend the family meeting, and then disinfected and bandaged Nureyev’s scratches himself.</p><p>“I didn’t do it on purpose,” Nureyev says quietly.</p><p>“I don’t think I believe that, but even if you didn’t, that doesn’t really make it better,” Juno says. His tone is dark, and it sends an involuntary shiver through Nureyev, but he knows Juno well enough by now to know he’s not angry. He’s just upset. “I saw the marks before, but I wanted to believe it wasn’t that bad. I should’ve spoken up earlier.”</p><p>Nureyev grits his teeth. “You’re turning this into something it isn’t. I told you, it’s a nervous tick that happens when I’m overwhelmed, that’s all. It was only bad this time because my nails were so sharp.”</p><p><em>“Am</em> I turning this into something it isn’t?” Juno says, reeling around to fix him with a gaze that pierces through his skin as easily as the acrylics had. “Are you trying to tell me this<em> isn’t</em> you hurting yourself?”</p><p>The wording makes Nureyev flinch. It feels embarrassing, when put that way. “It’s just a grounding technique, Juno. It’s not…that.”</p><p>“Yeah, and when I started drinking it was just a distraction technique. Until it couldn’t distract me anymore, and I had to find something stronger. You’ve worn sharp nails plenty of times, Nureyev, and I’ve never seen any marks like that on you before. This is getting worse. What happens when that doesn’t ‘ground’ you anymore, either? Will you pull out one of your knives?”</p><p>Nureyev must physically cringe, because Juno’s face crumples into an apologetic expression and he shakes his head, rubbing his eye.</p><p>“God, Nureyev, I’m sorry. I don’t…I shouldn’t be yelling at you. I’m just...fucking scared,” he says. “I know this doesn’t feel that serious to you, but I’ve been where you are, and I know how much of a slippery slope it is. I can’t just stand by and watch you do that to yourself.”</p><p>“Then…what am I supposed to do instead?” Nureyev says, and his voice comes out a lot quieter and more pathetic than he’d expected.</p><p>Juno lets out a soft, pained noise, and takes his hand. “When you’re feeling really panicked, there are other things that can help. Other things to ground you. Touching something cold, eating something sour, listing everything you can see and hear and smell…I can teach you those.”</p><p>“…You’re very well-versed.”</p><p>He snorts. “Had to learn them eventually, or who knows if I’d even be alive today.”</p><p>“Tonight was…not good,” Nureyev admits cautiously. “Most of the time it is subconscious, though. I don’t even realize I’m doing it until I see the marks after. I don’t know if I’ll always be…present enough, to stop myself.”</p><p>“Losing the acrylics and keeping your nails cut short should help with that, and…I can get you gloves. The kind designed so you can still use your comms with them on,” Juno says. “If you ever feel like you’re getting worked up, you could put them on. Would you like that?”</p><p>“If…if they came from you, yes. And if they’re thick enough. Some gloves I’ve still been able to…scratch myself through.”</p><p>Juno grimaces. “How long has this been happening, Nureyev?”</p><p>Nureyev averts his eyes, suddenly ashamed of the answer. “A…rather long time, I suppose. Since I was a child.”</p><p>Juno squeezes his hand, but this time it seems like it’s more to comfort himself than to comfort Nureyev. “It’s probably gonna be hard to get yourself out of the habit, then. I’ll help you, though, okay? I’m gonna help you with this. You just have to let me.”</p><p>Nureyev swallows, then nods. “You won’t tell the others, though, will you? I don’t want to worry them for no reason.”</p><p>“It wouldn’t be for <em>no reason-”</em> Juno starts to retort, but cuts himself off. “Fine. I won’t tell them, but…you’ll talk to me if you ever need it, right?”</p><p>A beat. Then Nureyev says, “Of course.”</p><p> </p><p>A part of Nureyev wanted to believe that he didn’t need the help that Juno offered him, and that the lady really was taking things more seriously than was necessary.</p><p>Then one evening when the others are away on a mission and he’s left alone to study and fire watch the ship, he finds himself wound as taut as piano wire for no good reason. As he paces back and forth in his room, he spies the gloves that Juno bought him lying next to the lamp on his desk. They’re sleek, dark red numbers that look like they cost a decent amount of money. He realizes guiltily that Juno probably sought out a more expensive pair because he knew if they looked good, Nureyev would be more likely to wear them. He wasn’t wrong.</p><p>Nureyev slips them onto his hands, more for want of something to do than anything else. They’re soft and remind him of Juno- of how much Juno cares about him, even if that care is excessive- which is enough of an excuse for him. Then he gets back to work.</p><p>He’s six memorizations attempts deep into studying the guard shifts on the Vector space probe they’ll be breaking into on their next job, getting more and more frustrated with his own inability to keep things straight and not get distracted by the hum of the ship or the mess of his room or a persistent smudge on his glasses, when he’s interrupted by the sound of the Carte Blanche’s garage opening.</p><p>He pulls himself to his feet to welcome the others back, when he realizes the skin on his arms is tinged pink and slightly raw to the touch. He’s been scratching himself subconsciously this whole time- but there are no marks other than the faded scars from his previous slip up. The gloves did their job.</p><p>He leaves them on when he goes to the garage, and he sees Juno’s eye drift down to them almost immediately. The look on his face is a cocktail of concern, pride and relief. When he pulls Nureyev into a hug, he holds him for a little longer than usual. Nureyev doesn’t complain.</p><p> </p><p>Some days are better than others. On one particular night, it feels like everything is coming down on him at once. He always gets tense in October, the memories of what happened during that month back on New Kinshasa a little closer to the front of his filing cabinet than they are the rest of the year. That coupled with the fact that he’s on a job tomorrow, they’re currently flying close to the Outer Rim, and he just had a particularly bad call with his creditors…has not put him in a good headspace.</p><p>He’s at least had the foresight to know that he’s not doing well, and has been wearing his gloves almost all day. He only just took them off so he could eat a snack at his desk while working through his finances, but now…the numbers are swimming in front of his eyes, and every time he sees them he feels worse and worse. How did it get this bad? How did he <em>let it</em> get this bad?</p><p>The gloves are only on the other side of the room, but right now that couple of yards feels like an insurmountable distance. More than that, as he digs his nails into his neck, he can’t help but think he doesn’t deserve them. He doesn’t deserve Juno’s kindness or comfort, not over something like this, that’s entirely his fault.</p><p>All his acrylics have all been tossed, however, and he’s made sure that his nails are consistently cut as close as possible. They can’t do much damage.</p><p>He wishes they could do more.</p><p>He’s feeling so much at once that he thinks he might be sick from it all. He can’t take it. He tries to focus and ground himself in his surroundings like Juno taught him.</p><p>
  <em>I hear…the hum of the engines, a drip in the shower, my own heart beating, the echo of a comms beeping and a man telling me I only have two more weeks-</em>
</p><p>
  <em>No. I see…a lamp, a stack of books, a half-eaten granola bar, a knife-</em>
</p><p>A knife.</p><p>There have to be twenty or thirty of them, scattered around the room. He can place at least ten without even looking, including one strapped to his thigh. His hand twitches towards it.</p><p>It’d be so easy. It’d only take a nick, really, to break through the fog in his mind and bring him back from the brink of panic. And wouldn’t it be a small price to pay, really? He thinks of all of Juno’s scars, everything he’s suffered in his life, and it feels like so little in comparison. Juno didn’t deserve any of that. It shouldn’t have happened to him. It should’ve been Nureyev.</p><p>He gets as far as touching the handle of the knife in his holster before thinking about Juno reminds him of something else: the horrible, terrified look on his face when he’d walked in on Nureyev bleeding.</p><p>Maybe Nureyev isn’t worthy of his care, but that doesn’t change the fact that Juno cares about him. How could he put him through that again?</p><p>Before he knows it, his feet are carrying him up from his desk, out of his room, and down the hall.</p><p>Juno opens the door after one knock, stifling a yawn. “’Reyev?” he mumbles. “It’s one in the morning. I thought we weren’t having one of our talks…tonight…”</p><p>He trails off as he looks up, taking in Nureyev’s appearance for the first time. Nureyev doesn’t know what he looks like right now, but it can’t be good; he’s barefaced and trembling, his arms and neck marred by red lines.</p><p>“Oh. Hey. Okay,” Juno says. “Come inside.”</p><p>He pulls Nureyev into the room, and Nureyev lets him, feeling woozy and close to tears.</p><p>“What’s up?” Juno asks, gently guiding him to sit on the bed. “Why…why didn’t you use the gloves?”</p><p>“They were on the other side of the room,” Nureyev says, and even as he does, he knows it’s a pathetic excuse. “I…I was…I think I’m…” He can’t bring himself to say the words out loud. They’re still too raw, too honest. Too embarrassing. In the end, all he manages is, “I don’t think I should be alone right now.”</p><p>Then he unsheathes his knife from its holster and holds it out.</p><p>“Nureyev…?”</p><p>“Take it. Please.”</p><p>Seeing the realization dawn on Juno’s face as he takes the knife almost makes him feel worse than everything else that’s happened today. He feels pathetic and stupid and <em>weak</em>. Doesn’t he have enough on his plate without creating more problems for himself?</p><p>And now he’s crying. Great.</p><p>“Hey,” Juno says. “Hey, you’re okay.”</p><p>Juno pulls him into a hug, putting an arm around him as he cries into his shoulder.</p><p>“I’m sorry,” Nureyev gasps out between sobs.</p><p>“Shhh. Don’t be sorry. I’m so proud of you.”</p><p><em>That </em>doesn’t make any sense. Juno should be frustrated with him, or at the very least pity him for his current display. He certainly shouldn’t be <em>proud.</em></p><p>“You could’ve done it, but you came here and talked to me instead,” Juno says into his scalp. “You made the right choice. The brave choice. I’m proud of you, baby.”</p><p>He tries to respond, but no words come out. Juno rocks him gently, stroking his hair, then starts to hum quietly. It’s a tune that Nureyev doesn’t recognize, but he knows what Juno’s doing: trying to occupy all his senses so his brain gets distracted from whatever’s upsetting him. It’s…working surprisingly well.</p><p>After another minute or two, his tears finally subside. He’s still not sure where they even came from in the first place. He detaches himself from Juno and scrubs his eyes, mortified by the wet patch he’s left behind on Juno’s hoodie.</p><p>“Good lord,” he sniffs. “What a mess.”</p><p>Juno laughs lightly. “Don’t worry about it.”</p><p>“…Thank you, Juno. I’ll find a better way. I promise, I’ll find a better way to prevent these outbursts.”</p><p>“Or…you could just let yourself feel them. The emotions, I mean,” Juno says. “I mean, obviously pretty much anything is better than hurting yourself, but…you can also just let yourself feel it. Let me help you through feeling it.”</p><p>Nureyev makes a face. “I don’t know about that. They’re…unpleasant. The emotions, I mean. It’s hard to make myself believe that I’m better off feeling them than…making them go away.”</p><p>“Figures, given how long you’ve been holding them in. It’s a process. I get that. Can you promise me one thing, though?”</p><p>“Mm?”</p><p>“If you feel like this again, you come to me like you did tonight. Promise me that.”</p><p>Nureyev is quiet for a long time. It feels…wrong, to burden Juno like that, especially since he often gets this way in the middle of the night when everyone else is asleep.</p><p>At the same time, though…the problem with letting himself be so open and intimate with another human being is that it’s difficult to hide things from him. Juno sees him naked on a regular basis. It’s not like he could hide scratch marks or…worse, from him- and the thought of him seeing that suddenly hurts worse than the thought of him seeing Nureyev cry.</p><p>“I promise,” he says.</p><p>“Good.” Juno gives him a gentle half smile. “Thank you, Nureyev.”</p><p><em>Thank you, </em>he says, as though Nureyev has just courageously accepted some arduous mission. As if the simple act of keeping his blood inside his body is the hardest thing in the world.</p><p>For some reason, it is.</p><p>Knowing there’s someone there to pull his hand away, to hold him as he shakes- that makes it just a little easier, though. He curls up against Juno and they fall asleep that way, together on top of Juno’s covers.</p><p>The knife lies on the bedside table, forgotten.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I love you all, stay safe &lt;3</p><p>As always, comments and kudos are appreciated so, so much. I know this one was kind of a lot but it's a subject that's very close to my heart, so thank you for reading.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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